Sanctions relief for a nuclear freeze risks repeating past failures

President Lee Jae Myung, visiting the United States, set off controversy in an interview published on Tuesday by outlining a phased solution to North Korea’s nuclear program — freeze, reduction and dismantlement — and suggesting sanctions relief in return for a freeze. Lee said pursuing denuclearization as an immediate goal would achieve nothing, adding that exchanging ineffective sanctions for a halt to nuclear and missile development would have considerable value.

But phased approaches to North Korea’s nuclear program have already failed, as demonstrated by the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework and the Six-Party Talks of the 2000s. Pyongyang received compensation for freezes while failing to fulfill agreements or refusing to cooperate during verification before negotiations collapsed. Lee said a moving car must first be stopped before its direction can be changed. North Korea, however, has never truly stopped the car. Such an approach could ultimately help legitimize the nuclear-armed status Pyongyang seeks, as happened with Pakistan.

At the 2019 Hanoi summit, the United States rejected North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s proposal to trade the dismantlement of the Yongbyon nuclear complex for substantial sanctions relief. Offering sanctions relief now for a mere freeze, rather than dismantlement, would amount to rewarding North Korea despite its illicit nuclear and missile development.

China and Russia have increasingly provided North Korea with economic and diplomatic breathing room, helping Pyongyang withstand sanctions. But concluding that sanctions are therefore ineffective is shortsighted. Consider what would happen if the sanctions disappeared altogether. Their effectiveness must be judged over the long term.

The Donald Trump administration has maintained the goal stated in the 2018 U.S.-North Korea Singapore joint statement: complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. That position was reaffirmed Monday at a trilateral meeting in New York of the top diplomats of Korea, the United States and Japan.

A pacemaker must know how to control both the direction and tempo of a race. With closer North Korea-China-Russia ties already tilting the playing field, urging everyone to run rapidly in only one direction is not good pacing.

The government should shed its impatience and pursue an approach toward North Korea that contributes to substantive denuclearization, grounded in close coordination among Korea, the United States and Japan. Diplomacy remains necessary, but incentives should be calibrated to verified steps by Pyongyang rather than offered prematurely. The objective should remain reducing the nuclear threat without inadvertently accepting North Korea’s nuclear arsenal as permanent or weakening the international leverage needed to secure meaningful concessions. That distinction remains critically important.